Is the g51 getting a refresh? ddr3?

I'm about to buy a new lappy and I've been looking at the Asus g series but I cant find many on amazon and the only site I've found where you can customize them ( www.xoticpc.com) is backordered on the 15 inch. Also I noticed those models only have 800mhz ddr2, whats up with that? Are they updating the line soon? Assuming I cant get an i7 core in a 15in form factor I will probably go with the Asus unless the new alienware m15x is affordable. Do all your asus g51's use ddr 2?

 

Through the Asus website I searched all the vendors and couldnt find one that uses ddr3 only gddr3 in the videocard which is great but why pair that with ddr2 ram, seems kind of outdated.

 

I am pretty (pretty, pretty, pretty) sure that the G51 will get a DDR3 variant.

 

They'll probably hold off until the new Intel CPU's come out, at which point it will get refreshed and probably renamed slightly.

 

Pretty (pretty, pretty, pretty) sure the base name will still be "G51"

 

Besides XoticPC, I know Gentech lets you customize before buying. They aren't backordered to my knowledge, although I don't think that DDR3 RAM is offered as an option.

I wouldn't be surprised if a standard DDR3 option was offered at some point soon.

 

The difference between DDR2 and DDR3 is minimal at best anyways. while the clock speed is higher DDR3 suffers from poor latency, it gives maybe 5% more performance, with a tiny bit less power usage.

 

It's not we don't offer DDR3 as an option, it's because the RAM slot on the mainboard is DDR2, therefore, DDR3 won't fit.

 

Yes, but they might change the "vx" part.

 

any ideas that when will the G51vx-a1 will be available?

 

To keep the G51 cheap. The price/performance ratio is not worth going to DDR3 yet. Once the DDR3 prices come down, it will migrate to the entry-level gaming niche that Asus is selling to.

 

asus will offer ddr3 in all their refreshes with windows 7 come october or novemeber

 

that means the G51 won't available until windows 7 come out?

 

Nobody (any manufacturer) is going to be releasing any refresh updates of their units until W7 launches in 4 weeks....

It makes no sense from a marketing perspective to pay the production license for Vista and then add in the upgrade one, and there is also the issue of consumer confusion.

Plus, the fact that the W7 upgrades are likely going to take up to 1-2 months before all are mailed based on the Vista upgrade process, and that's a marketing nightmare - "buy our brand new product now, but in 2 weeks you can get W7 native install vs wait until Thanksgiving/Xmas for your upgrade to ship."

 

i think that the new one with corei7 mobile will still have 260mgtx.

like forge said, the base name will stay at G51 but i think it will become G51V z or something different followed by the respective A1/X1A/RX05 etc.

 

I hope it won't still have a GTX260m. I would like them to go to a GTS. It won't hurt the gaming power of the machine as much as it will help the battery life and system heat issues.

 

I'm pretty (pretty, pretty, pretty) sure it'll still be a GTX 260m.

 

yep, forge is always rite. end of story.

but srsly tho, no GTS, its gonna stay at GTX, since its faster and its fine for handling the heat, thats the way its designed.

 

The next series of Nvidia (or ATI for that matter) mobile GPUs are a little ways off, so I'm going to agree with Forge and say that unless they find a way to enhance the cooling, it will still have the GTX 260m. Also, I'd expect DDR2 still as DDR3 in a notebook isn't that much of a performance increase and is more expensive than DDR2, and will be for some time.

 

So seandude are you saying you don't think the new lines of laptops coming out in october are going to have the new ati5000 series? I havent seen any definitive release date of those cards. Speculation that alot of current models will be noticably more powerful in a couple months kind of has me put off to buying a laptop at the moment.

 

The 5xxx series won't be out this year...

 

No, they wont have the ATI5xxx. And Nvidia's next mobile chip, whether they name it GTX 3xxM or whatever, will most likely be 1) released as a budget card first then performance later to steal ATI5xxx thunder, or 2) save them all to be released around the time of ATI's 5xxx release to deflate their sales/popularity and steal more sales.


Im betting on door #2. So dont expect any MAJOR new GPU releases until at least middle of december - january.

 

Interesting, anothing thing I've been wondering concerning laptop hardware is the mobile pci slot (mxm i think its called) changed everytime a new series of cards is released or will the next series of cards likely be compatable with the current offerings of upgradable laptops or barebones laptops.

 

It really depends on the company. 99% of notebooks don't allow you to upgrade your GPU so you're SOL there. There is a lot more than just the physical slot that you need to take into account before you can even consider upgrading a GPU too (in that 1% of notebooks that CAN, read the sticky in the GPU forums for more info).

 

Asus uses proprietary MXM cards, some of them have had extra electrical contacts which only work with specific Asus laptop motherboards, and some have even been completely backwards on a hardware level. They also restrict certain cards in the main system BIOS and also write their own proprietary BIOSes for the cards.

In other words, if you are looking to buy an Asus, or another laptop from the vast majority of companies, you will not be able to upgrade to a newer card. There have been exceptions in the past, but this was usually the result of the company refreshing the platform with a similar, newer card that happened to work (seeing as how our GTX 260Ms are pretty much the top/end-line of this current technology, don't expect a higher spec card past the GTX280M, which does not work in current Asus laptops) or the result of third party end user tweaks and soft/hard mods.

As you can see here (My GTX 260M from my G71GX-Rx05):


The card is different from other MXM designs. IE- backwards on a hardware level, the gpu chip is on the opposite side from most MXM cards...